PortableApps has issued a new beta version of its Platform 2.0 release, downloadable here. If you’re unfamiliar with PortableApps, I covered it previously here, and it swept the SoureForge Community Choice Awards for open source software last night, winning four awards, including Best Project, and Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything. It’s a suite of truly excellent, pre-selected, open source applications that you can stick on a USB flash drive. That enables you to have your applications--with your pre-set preferences--available to run on any computer, anytime.

It’s especially popular as a way to store many useful applications on a pocketable drive, but many netbook owners who don't want to run bloated applications use the small-footprint apps in the PortableApps suite. The open source applications that you get are top-notch, and the new upgrade to the suite includes many meaningful enhancements.

Do you carry a USB thumb drive with you? If you don't, you should. These have fallen radically in price, and can be useful in numerous ways. For about $150 you can get 64GB drive that fits in your pocket, and keep it loaded with countless free, open source applications, or versions of Linux that you can run on any computer any time. With a 64GB drive, you can also easily back up files to your thumb drive, and conveniently transfer files back-and-forth between computers.

I've written before about PortableApps and MacLibre, which offer free, single downloads that deliver bushels of top-notch open source applications to Windows and Mac users, respectively. With them, you can almost instantly populate a computer or even a USB thumb drive with useful applications ranging from AbiWord (word processor), to Blender (animation and graphics), to GIMP (graphics), to Adium (instant messaging), to Cyberduck (FTP client), to Firefox (browser). As DownloadSquad notes, Windows users have a similar free option in Smart Installer Pack.  Here's what you get for free with it.